Tag: Union Pool

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Honeyhoney’s Benjamin Jaffe Releases a Tender and Swooning, Indie Rock-Inspired Single

Benjamin Jaffe is a Massachusetts-born and currently New York-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known for being one-half of renowned Americana duo honeyhoney however, years before he formed honeyhoney, with Suzanne Santo, Jaffe began his career as a solo artist, who received attention for crafting material that was honest and experimental  — and with his forthcoming full-length, solo debut Oh, Wild Ocean of Love, Jaffe returns to his solo roots while revealing a broader array of influences than with his primary gig, as the material draws from jazz and Motown-era soul among others.  Interestingly, Oh, Wild Ocean of Love’s latest single “Blooming” pairs rolling and propulsive drumming with shimmering and loping guitars with Jaffe’s aching and tender vocals and a soaring hook to evoke the swooning throes of passion, while sonically nodding at JOVM mainstay Nick Hakim but with a wild, sense of experimentalism.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Comprised of founding members Cory Feirman (bass, vocals) and Dan Wise (guitar, vocals) with Will Schmeichen (drums) the Brooklyn-based punk rock trio Honey can trace their origins to when its founding duo met at Academy Records — at the time Feirman worked as a buyer, while Wise was a regular customer. As the story goes, Wise stopped by Academy Records and mentioned that he was looking for The Gun Club‘s Death Party EP, which happened to be the next record in the stack of recent arrivals that Feirman was pricing. The coincidence ultimately led them to realize that they had had more in common than a love of punk rock and punk rock records, and they began playing together not long after that. Interestingly, at the time Wise was a member of JOVM mainstays Psychic Ills and shared an occasional bill with Schmeichen, who was a member of Amen Dunes. Wise and Freirman recruited Schmeichen, who was interested in joining a more straightforward rock-leaning project.
Since their formation, the band has shared stages with the likes of Dead Moon, J. Mascis, Sheer Mag, The Men, Destruction Unit and others, while quickly developing a reputation for being one of the area’s rawest punk bands; in fact, with the release of 2015’s Love Is Hard, the trio received praise for releasing, in the words of Bryon Coley, “a great hard-edged slice of rock noise.” and with the forthcoming release of their sophomore effort, New Moody Judy, the Brooklyn-based trio hope to further cement their burgeoning reputation for blistering noisey rock. And unsurprisingly, New Moody Judy‘s first single “Dream Come Now,” manages to sonically reminds me of JOVM mainstays Ex-Cult and NOTS in the sense that the Brooklyn trio is equally primal, forceful — and perhaps more important, mosh-pit friendly.

The band has a September 12, 2017 show at Union Pool with NOTS, and it may be one of the highlights of the musical year.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Slow-Burning and Ambient Sounds of Vorhees

Dana Wachs is a New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based, classically trained cellist, bassist composer and audio engineer, who writes, records and performs as Vorhees — and can trace the origins of her solo musical career, to when she joined the Holy Rollers when she was 19 and dove deeply into the world of touring and live sound as a renowned audio engineer, who worked at NYC-based Greene Street Recording and toured with St. Vincent, Grizzly Bear and others over the course of the next 20 years.

In 2009, Wachs debuted her solo compositions at Death By Audio and from that performance, she continued to work on her own improvised music, influenced by her surroundings and moods and then released her debut 7 inch “The Orchard,” and composing for modern dance, film and commissioned performances and recordings for fashion designer Rachel Comey. And adding to a growing profile, the New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based audio engineer and composer has opened for Cat Power, Matmos and Dum Dum Girls and had played sets at Basilica Soundscape and Iceland Airwaves.

Her long-awaited Vorhees debut EP Black Horse Pike was released yesterday through Styles Upon Styles Records and the EP’s latest single is the delicate and patient “SPL” which features Wachs’ gorgeous and ethereal, Bjork-like vocals over ambient synths and electronics in a song that gently ebbs and flows in a subtly psychedelic fashion. And because of its slow-burning nature, the track manages to possess a quietly challenging nature that requires the listener’s full attention; but once there, the song reveals itself through repeated listens based on the artist’s on experiences as the material explores Wachs’ memories of teenage meanderings in New Jersey suburbs, the scars and ghosts of relationships, and the weird and impossible waking unreality of her insomniac tendencies through the world in ever changing hotel rooms and tour bus bunks.

The recently released video consists of fittingly slow-burning and psychedelic-leaning visuals based around the EP’s artwork, created by Wachs’ mother.